


The scariest part is letting go

by nambnb



Series: Tales of the Vashoth Qunari and the Tevinter Mage [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Death, Desperation, M/M, life threatening situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 06:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8700553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nambnb/pseuds/nambnb
Summary: He wouldn’t let go! Never! Ever! Even if it tore his arm off! He wouldn’t! Yet the eyes of his beloved told him that he didn’t see any other way out of this situation to keep at least one of them from falling to his death. The mage still wouldn’t give in. This whole situation was ridiculous anyhow! How could something like that even have happened?





	

**Author's Note:**

>  Chronology: pre Trespasser  
>  Relationship status: relationship established  
>  Inspiration: song “The Words” by Christina Perri

“Let go, Dorian.”

“No!”

“I’m too heavy for you, you can’t hold me.”

“NO!”

He wouldn’t let go! Never! Ever! Even if it tore his arm off! He wouldn’t!

Yet the eyes of his beloved told him that he didn’t see any other way out of this situation to keep at least one of them from falling to his death.

The mage still wouldn’t give in. This whole situation was ridiculous anyhow! How could something like that even have happened?

One moment they had fought a giant in the Emerald Graves – and they had won! Granted that it had managed to send the Iron Bull flying towards a rock, rendering him unconscious, and that their enemy had also landed a knock-out punch on Varric when the dwarf had tried to sneak up too close to it to place some spikes for their foe to step in. But a well-placed shock of electricity by Dorian had stunned it long enough for the inquisitor to land a fatal blow. All the darn beast had to do was to die gracefully. But it had to fall over with such impact, that it shook the ground and had even blown the heavily armoured Qunari off his feet, driving him close to a very high edge overlooking the river flowing below. The inquisitor had tried to catch himself before he fell by ramming his axe into the ground, but the movement had been unlucky, making him pull a muscle in the process, so he had let go of his weapon involuntarily, effectively making him sail over the edge in the end. Dorian had had barely enough time to cast a Haste spell to highlight his own senses and enable himself to sprint forwards to get close enough to catch his lover’s hand.

The impact had most certainly dislocated his shoulder as hot pain had been shooting up his arm instantly.

The inquisitor was heavy, so heavy; nearly seven feet tall, brawny with strong bones and clad in thick warrior armour.

“Let go.”

“I won’t!”

“Dorian.”

“No!”

How could he even propose such a thing? Was he out of his mind?

Dorian hadn’t managed look away from his beloved’s eyes even for a second. He had seen the panic as he had fallen, and the surprise at having been caught by Dorian. For a split second the inquisitor had even smiled, but it had vanished the moment he had realized that Dorian could not hold him for long, much less pull him up. And the ground the mage had dug his fingers into in desperation was giving in, too, making him slide closer to the edge with every second ticking by. Now the Qunari looked at him with an expression that tried to calm his lover down while simultaneously forcing his own fear to the backmost corner of his mind. He smiled; a broken smile – one with tears at the corners of his eyes – but not for fear of having to face death. It was a smile of departure, of knowing there was no way to turn this situation around, of having to let go, of having to say good-bye now.

“No! Don’t you dare give up on me! I swear I’ll summon your spirit and bind it to a punching bag! You won’t die here! I won’t allow it! Not while I’m here!”

The inquisitor’s smile dug deeper into his face, the desperation shining through a little more obviously than before.

It was precisely because Dorian was there, because the person he loved the most was holding onto him with all his might and was in danger of dying together with him if he kept it up much longer.

Tears were already spilling from Dorian’s eyes. The pain pulsating through his arm from holding onto such a heavy weight with his arm out of joint was doubled by an almost unbearable throbbing of his strained muscles and ligaments on the verge of a rupture. But worse than the physical pain was the torment his soul went through right now. There was almost no feeling left in his hand aside from the pain in his arm, making it almost impossible for him to tell whether he hadn’t let go without actually willing it yet. The only way of checking was to keep his eyes locked with the inquisitor’s, but the calm in the other’s eyes was simply maddening.

“I don’t want you to fall, Dorian.”

“I don’t care! If you want to prevent me from slipping, why don’t you come up here instead?!”

The inquisitor chuckled through his teeth; a sound closer to a breathy hiss than a laugh.

“I can’t. I’ve pulled my muscle so it denies me all movement. There’s no way other than for you to let go of me.”

“I said no!”

The earth and grass Dorian had dug his fingers into gave in, making him slide over the rubble surrounding the stone he had used like a barrier between his shoulder and the edge of the cliff by half-clinging to it with the crook of his arm. Now his body was slowly pulled forward in a way that made Dorian try to grab the stone, but its surface was too smooth, making it hard to hold onto it.

He wished he still had some mana to spend, but he had exhausted his energy with that last Haste spell. There was no way to recover enough mana to cast a levitation spell, much less in a matter of seconds before his beloved would hit the ground – not to mention the state of his arm would make the execution of the necessary arm movement an almost impossible task to manage as well.

“Amatus! What are you--?!”

“It’s fine, Dorian. Just let it happen.”

The Qunari had moved the root of his thumb and his pinky together, effectively decreasing the extent of the area above his wrist, making it way harder for Dorian to hold onto him and easier to slip out of his grasp.

“Amatus!”

He wouldn’t hold it against him to let him fall to his death. He even wished for it to happen so Dorian could get rid of the dreadful weight pulling him over the edge as well. The mage could read it in his eyes and in his everlasting smile.

Dorian’s chin shivered, his eyes were overflowing with tears. He could feel him slip out of his grasp faster and faster now. There was no way of preventing the inevitable from happening.

“Ama—“

He fell.

A light exploded from the mage and rushed towards the inquisitor, engulfing his body for a moment, but shattering like glass the moment the Qunari’s body hit the ground.

“AMATUS!”

Dorian didn’t know how he had managed to get up even though his legs felt like jelly the moment he tried to move. He couldn’t remember the moment he ran towards the nearest slope to get down, stumbled, fell, got up again and made his way to the spot where the broken body of his beloved lay.

“Amatus?”

The Qunari’s eyes were half open as he stared towards the heavens while half his body was bathed by the river. He didn’t even look like anything had happened to him; no unnatural positioning of limbs or the like. He just lay there and… stared out of empty eyes. His head had hit a rock protruding out of the water judging from the blood seeping out from the back of his head. He must have broken his neck or cracked his skull as he fell and died instantly. The half put together barrier Dorian had sent after him on impulse from resources he did not know he had had not worked properly expectedly.

Dorian knew the inquisitor must be dead, yet he felt his hand reach for a bottle with healing mist, uncorking it with his teeth and sprinkling its content over his lover’s body. The substances glistened and glinted as they spilled over the warrior’s body in a green light, then dimmed away a few seconds later.

Dorian could not help himself but to stare.

He didn’t want to believe any of this had just happened.

Yet his mind whispered to him to prove it by reviving him as he felt some mana having returned to his body after his Death Siphon ability had managed to finally draw energy from the fallen giant up at the cliffs. But Dorian still stared on in horror at the fallen body of his beloved, rendering him unable to concentrate. The state of his arm made it impossible to perform the correct hand movements to cast it properly, too, so the spell took on a violet colour instead of green. This wasn’t a Spirit ability, it was closer to something a Necromancer would produce – and it made the inquisitor’s body rise.

“No…”

The Qunari stood in front of him, his gaze passing right through Dorian as he looked through tired eyes with a half-open mouth, all while violet light danced around his body.

The fact that death magic made him move and the sight of him in that state sent Dorian to his knees. He clung to his lover’s body with his still functioning arm as he knelt there and cried heavily.

The inquisitor’s facial expression was impassive as the mage shivered under his tears and cursed everything under the sun for having taken his amatus from him.

The left hand with the anchor’s mark twitched as the green magic of the Fade danced around the gap that connected the inquisitor’s body to the netherworld. The Necromancer magic just wouldn’t abate, keeping the warrior’s body to stand up straight in a stance as if to await commands.

His unfocused eyes moved around slowly and his eyelids twitched, like he was trying to wake up from a dream even though he wasn’t asleep. His silhouette flickered from time to time, as if something tried to connect with his body but didn’t manage to. It had the same shape as the inquisitor. An onlooker might say it was his soul not knowing where to go and being trapped between escaping a dead body and being tied down by the death magic.

The raw magic of the Fade seeping through the scar on his hand hissed as if angered by the fact that another type of magic was cast upon its host. It sizzled, getting ever louder, and branched away from the hand, making its way up the inquisitor’s wrist probing around like the tongue of a snake. Then it connected to the violet glow of the necromantic magic as if to figure out its purpose, making it light up green for a moment.

“Uh…”

The Qunari let out a low, pained sound, drawing Dorian’s attention towards him.

“Amatus?”

He didn’t want to hope against hope that a miracle might happen, but his feelings betrayed him before he even finished the thought.

“Kh…”

The inquisitor breathed out through his teeth and began to shake, his hand twitching more and more as the anchor’s magic began to spread out further, reaching up this lower arm now. The next thing it connected to were various particles of the healing mist still scattered all over its host’s body. The moment it made the connection to one, the whole mist lit up around the Qunari as if to tell the Fade magic about its purpose.

Healing.

Healing, it was healing!

Healing had been wished for, craved for desperately enough to mix it up with Necromancy.

The Fade’s magic had no consciousness, but it still realized the intention behind the manner of magic cast upon the body it was housed in.

Healing was the wish and the Fade was shaped by the wishes of those calling upon it. The raw energy of the Fade lashed out from the mark on the inquisitor’s left palm and engulfed his whole body for a moment.

Dorian took a step back reflexively, but was unable to draw his eyes away from the spectacle of skin closing and broken bones being mended. He could swear that he saw his lover’s spirit being forced to reconnect with its body before he blinked.

Suddenly, the Qunari toppled over, holding the arm with the anchor and cried out in pain. It was a lively cry, accompanied by a healthy expression of pain on his face.

A relieved smile tore at the corners of Dorian’s mouth, but he wasn’t convinced he could believe in miracles to happen just like that after all.

“Amatus?”

“Dorian?”

The inquisitor lifted his head and looked at Dorian with a face that spoke of a heavy migraine and a voice sounding exhausted and confused.

“What happened?”

The sentence “You’re alive” danced on Dorian’s lips, but was not uttered. Instead his fingertips shot up to the other’s throat, trying to feel the vibrations of blood being pumped through his veins. There was a recognizable pulse. He still didn’t dare to give into relief just now, afraid of his senses being impaired by sheer grief. He guided his hand away from his throat and held it in front of his mouth then; he could feel breath on his skin. Dorian wanted to make sure once again, to lean his head against his lover’s chest, even knowing that the armour would prevent him from hearing any heartbeat. He could feel his chest slightly raising as he breathed, though. Tears of relief streamed down his face and he had lost the ability to speak to hiccups of a laugh mixed in with the tears.

“Dorian.” The inquisitor’s tone was soothing as he slowly reached out for the mage to cradle him in his arms. “It’s fine. I’m good. I don’t know how, but I’m here. Don’t cry.”

“You’re alive… You’re alive…!” His voice broke as the tears choked him. “Don’t you dare do that to me ever again, you hear me. You… You terrible…! Andraste’s blessings, you’re alive…”

“Hmm.”

He held him gently, careful not to hurt the other’s bruised shoulder, and rocked him a little as he allowed Dorian to let the stress flood away with his tears. He didn’t know what exactly had happened. He somewhat remembered a strange vision of being outside of his body, yet tied to it and unable to leave or to move. The worst thing was not that but seeing Dorian’s desperation over his state, however. But the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to forget about it as well. The fear of having become a revived corpse for a moment sickened him, but his heartbeat hammering in his ears reminded him that his body was truly alive again, not just his soul tied to an empty vessel. The anchor had saved his life, but it had only been able to do so due to Dorian trying everything to revive him, even if he might have slipped into Necromancy now that the Qunari thought about how this was even possible. He also briefly remembered seeing an utter expression of shock on the mage’s face. Dorian had not intended to make him a revived corpse, but his magic had chained his lover’s soul long enough to the mortal world for the anchor to restore his health. In that way, Dorian had saved his life, too. And he was grateful for that.

He looked up at the cliff he had fallen off from. It reminded him of the poor woman they had found dead in the river just the other day, who had also fallen to her death in pursue of helping another. He briefly strengthened his embrace around Dorian. He was grateful that fate had decided not to repeat itself all the way at least.


End file.
